


Dance on the Strings

by Alex1920 (LookingSideways)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, separation fic, the only other characters in this are dead stormtroopers and a kid without lines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 04:11:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10779303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingSideways/pseuds/Alex1920
Summary: The Force gives and the Force takes.Bullshit.The Empire takes, and sometimes it relents enough to grab something back.Baze Returns to Jedha, Finally.





	Dance on the Strings

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Jiang Wen's movie, Hibiscus Town

The cold seeps everywhere – into the tips of his fingers, his cheeks, from the inside of his lungs. Damn, he had nearly forgotten how deep the cold could drill into bones. Or maybe he had just gotten sensitive. Older. Eight times, this moon’s planet had gone around its sun. Eight summers, eight winters, the births and the deaths, he had bypassed them all.

  
Now he stands on some unrecognizable street, waiting. The vendors are closing up shop for the night, the children have been called back for their evening meals. Jedha is rapidly shutting down, preparing for the curfew. Since when had there been a curfew? He has nowhere to go, his friends either dead or scattered to the winds. The man he is looking for might not even be alive, or willing to see him. Baze makes a left onto some unnamed road, searching for some sort of lodging. He knew better than to cross the Stormtroopers after curfew.

 

* * *

  
_One of his most distinctive memories – though the years have begun to blur together, and he finds that he can no longer count days by Jedha’s calendar – was shortly after his arrival in the imperial camp. Shipped off to a moon more barren than his own, forging blasters for hours on end._

  
_His shoulder ached beyond belief, the very tips of his hands developed a permanent tremor. The Empire seemed to have no regard for the needs of the body, and soon into his new job, Baze found he could not take anymore. (Or rather, his body could not. His mind was already gone when he felt the durasteel of the shuttle doors slam behind him.) He collapsed, slipping from his muddled half-aware state into full unconsciousness. His brain slugged back into action as he felt the burning rash of the whip cut down into his shoulder, his spine, before the electrodes and nerves inside his head decided they had enough and he slipped back into nothingness._

  
_That was not the last time he would be beaten, far from it. The one who brought the memory out of the grayish dull of the years was the first thing he saw when he swam up to consciousness, tearing himself away from the mud into the waking world. A small girl, with eyes that caught his gaze and trapped them like a spider holds a mosquito. Waiting, hungry. She said nothing, as did he. The steady hum of cargo ships banged around them, holding them into this place. It is distinctive, not because of cracking scabs or green eyes, but because it is the first time within his pounding head that he realizes that he is a new person. One who will never hold Chirrut._

 

* * *

  
Baze steps into the hotel room, wincing at the creak of the closing door. The bed sags at its center, worn out from travelers and locals alike looking for a quick lay. The mattress threatens to give way as he settles on the edge, reaching to take off his boots.

  
In the corner sits barely functioning heater, and he relinquishes the hope of ever being warm again as he curls the worn blankets around him.

 

* * *

  
_Chirrut is crying, and by the sudden drip of moisture on his hand, he must be too. The whites of Chirrut’s eyes have begun to fester, and the heat and the pain radiating from him is enough to make his own chest ache with every twist Chirrut makes across the ground. He scoots as close as possible to Chirrut, trying to comfort by the mere force of his presence. His hands stretch against the rough cuffs, his tongue dry against the cloth of the gag. He isn’t sure whether Chirrut is conscious enough to understand their situation, condemned as he is to the strange murky world of trying to swim through pain and fever._

  
_The guards, brethren of those who blinded and gagged his city, stood outside their door. Other guardians must be trapped in similar cells, he reasoned, but something inside his soul was screaming a different story. Deep inside himself, he knew the two of them were the last two forces in the galaxy that he would ever know. A Stormtrooper opens the creaking cell, aiming a blaster at him. He struggles to his feet without sparing a glance at Chirrut, as if the Empire would be blind to the way he had rushed for Chirrut only hours before. Another one grabs Chirrut under the shoulders, and Baze thinks he would rather die here fighting than to ever hear that sound come out of his husband’s mouth again._

  
_He doesn’t have the strength to pay attention to his surroundings as they are dragged back into the light of day. Vaguely, he realizes he is in a line, but all his attention is focused on the gathering crowd in front of him. It is as if it was only a few weeks ago, standing on the temple steps looking out at the pilgrims coming for blessings and guidance. Except now the faces are full of anxiety, uncertainty, and the most damning emotion of them all, curiosity._

  
_A name is called out, a sentence given. Beating, labor, firing squad, labor. The crowd watches as each unlucky soul meets their fate, the officers and the executioners making one statement clear – this is the way of those who oppose the new order. Chirrut Imwe. Baze Malbus. The two names are said less than a breath apart. The sentencing, a lifetime apart. A public beating for the dying monk, years of labor for his guardian._

  
_Baze does not know what he expects. Not to be torn away while still processing information, in the opposite direction of the way he had always promised to go. He fights, but the Empire has numbers and blasters on their side. Chirrut, as Baze sees him through the thickening crowd, is still not conscious enough to stand._

 

* * *

  
He wakes in the morning to numb toes and the bright Jedha sun glaring through the ratty curtains. Most of the breakfast has already been taken by the time he makes his way down the aging wooden steps, but he finds that the little edges scraped together are still altogether too much. Too much sweet, enough flavor that his tongue almost wants to revolt against his hand bringing the food closer to his mouth. His stomach is already feeling uncomfortably full by the time he forces down half the plate, but he wills himself to keep going. For once, there is no one else eager to take his food from him, and to waste it would be a sin. He relaxes the muscles in his arms as he finishes the plate, and forces himself to lean against the cold back of the chair.

  
He vomits as soon as he reaches his room. His knees ache on the creaking floors of the ‘fresher, and he feels the shame rise in him, cursing his body for betraying such a gift. For not realizing that he was – not exactly in heaven, but at least out of hell.  
  
He stares at the ruins of the Temple, which once split the sky in half, but did not fall to his knees and weep. No, the happiness and youth that allowed him to grieve with such open-heartedness had long ago withered and fallen away, like the branches of a rotting tree. Instead, he watched and waited. Humans, never able to truly let the past go, always haunted their grounds full of memories and longing. If he was right, a familiar face or two should appear and show him the way.

  
Hours pass, and nothing. He is finally stopped by a pair of Stormtroopers who question what his business is. He lies, and leaves.

  
Back in the hotel room, he tries to seal the window to keep the cold out. It does not work.

 

* * *

  
_The girl, despite his best efforts, has latched onto him. She stays while he heals, and waits. For what, he is never sure, but she sits around the dying heater at night, following him like a shadow. Her bony hands jut out of her too-small overcoat, always clenched. He tries the first few sentences of a halting conversation, but he was never the one to start talking. Since there is no longer anyone else to take the role, they sit in silence, and let the time slip by._

  
_They put him back to work, watching as he strains with the effort of crafting their medical supplies. He tries to not notice when the worker next to him collapses, tries not to think of the irony of giving his life to the medicine that will save others. As Baze has always known, a life only has value if those in power decides it does. The only proper meaning he had ever found in life was, in all probability, buried deep under red sand. Daily, he feels his hate grow for those who caused this suffering, who leeched the warmth out of the Galaxy quicker than the setting of the Jedha sun._

  
_It’s a wonder they haven’t shot him into the damp earth just yet – especially after he tackles a guard during a particularly long day._

  
_A beating later, the transport guards cut him loose from the ship’s binding, leaving him to wander through the residents’ camp towards his usual spot in the corner of a dilapidated building. The half-broken heater is still struggling through its daily rounds, but the girl, permanent resident of the far left corner, has disappeared._

  
_Baze lowers his aching body with a sigh, feeling strange without the ever-present stare latching onto him. He knows better than to get attached. He had clamped down on the defenses that Chirrut had spent years prying open after he had discovered how deeply caring for another could reach into your soul. What a fool’s decision that was._

 

* * *

  
A week in Jedha, and he is quickly running out of credits. He wanders to the market where the vendors shout out their wares, trying to entice the young workers and hurried mothers out of their last few credits. His clothes still scream of an offworlder, and he gets dragged into several stalls on his way to the center of the city. Like everything else in his absence, the once grand courtyard - an oasis in the cold desert - seemed to have been whisked away with the spring winds, leaving nothing but a sandy ruin of a past era. Stormtroopers seemed to mass here, mulling about with blasters hanging loosely at their sides. He ducks into a nearby alley, made narrow by the buildings beginning to slouch towards each other.

  
The ever-present chill was deepening with the dark blue seeping over the sky, causing windows to be shuttered and children to slink back into their homes. Back in the marketplace, shopkeepers are packing up their goods in a race against the setting sun.

  
He counts his credits for the fifth time that day, but they still do not add up to enough. Once he can see his breath come out in puffs against the seeping lights of the uncovered windows, he slips back into the alley. He takes his place between a broken speeder and a pile of old rags, hoping that the Empire has better pursuits than a lone man shivering against the waste.

 

* * *

  
_Days pass alone, and rumor spreads they have taken the children to another planet. Darker voices whisper that the Empire has no use for those who cannot work. Baze focuses on the task before him, and tries to ignore the anger threatening to flare back into his hands, his feet, wherever he cannot control it. Here, anger is almost as useless as grief._

  
_After his hands had packaged a planet’s medicine and forged a battalion’s blaster, the Empire sent him to a piece of volcanic rock. Ash billowed from the underground beds of lava into the grey atmosphere, but he was unaware, spending his time in underground chambers, dredging ore from unforgiving bedrock._

 

* * *

  
It’s the brick crumbling over his head that finally wakes him up, and any lingering half-remembered dreams are swept away with the sounds of blaster fire and injured bodies. He has nothing but the clothes on his back, but he hears a man shout blasphemy against the Empire and feels his blood rush. He knows that the idiot out there is going to be killed, but his human curiosity flares up and he cannot help but to look.

  
The man was wearing guardian robes – that was the first thing he noticed. His style – brash, offensive – was more becoming of a street fighter. His saffron robes fluttered into the grey Jedhan night as trooper after trooper was knocked down. His weapon was nothing more than a brown blur as he dodged the incoming blaster shots, striking where he could.

  
Alone, he faced the enemy. Alone, he brought them down into the red sand they all lived in. Another one from the front, assaulted by the staff. From behind – Baze grunted as he took the brunt of the blow onto his upper arm. The monk whipped around, striking the soldier off his feet.

  
Then, quiet.

  
“Thank you brother, for that kindness.”

  
The voice was light, yet rough as if the sand had clawed its way into his throat. The monk poked the fallen soldier, and laughed quietly to himself.  
Baze choked on his own breath. It was as if he was being stuffed into another body, one that was almost too tight to fit in, with softer hands and darker hair.

  
In another time, that laugh had rung out loud and clear across dusty courtyards.

  
Baze couldn’t piece together words in the best of times, but now that single sentence, that single laugh had forced the breath out of his lungs, leaving him grasping for any sense of balance.

  
He had waited all these years, yes, but he had kept his gaze on his hands, on the moment – making, straining, clawing. There was no time for the future.

  
“Are you alright, friend?”

  
The monk – Chirrut – takes a step towards him, and he retreats. His tongue feels heavy, his vocal chords straining from disuse. Chirrut smiles, all gums, like the child he once was. Every molecule of Baze wants to let his knees give out and beg for forgiveness, but he does not.

  
“Do you have a place to spend the night?” Chirrut is barely visible under a grainy port light, and Baze feels as if every detail might vanish into the night like a mirage.

  
Somehow he lets out a “no” – he could never lie to Chirrut, not truly – and he follows Chirrut as an injured soldier follows his master.

 

* * *

 

  
_They fetched him just as he nearly passed into unconsciousness. Before the colonel he stood, waiting for whatever new fun the man decided to have with him. The man, dressed in the smooth black of the Empire, regards him with amusement. To those with power, Baze was only a cog in the machine – invisible when working, useless when broken. The colonel knew this and delighted in it. After all, cogs were easily replaceable, so who cared if you broke a few down the line? As the colonel stared him down with those icy blue eyes, Baze knew one thing: power is control. Control allows you to do as you wish with lesser beings._

  
_Today, however, the whip was not forthcoming. The blaster aimed at his side was only a precautionary measure. The colonel smiled without mirth, and told him of his fate._

  
_Today, they decided they were through with him. That somehow he had given enough of his soul to repay the cost of his crimes against the Empire._

 

 

* * *

  
They walk deep though the west side of the city, into the remains of the religious quarter. The room that Chirrut leads him to is dark, but sparsely decorated enough that Baze finds his way easily through the haze. The lone window carved out of the mudbrick shows only the building across the alley, illuminated when carrier ships pass through on their way to port. Chirrut pushes something smooth into his hands – were they always this shaky?

  
Words might have been floating towards him in the dark, but Baze’s senses were being overwhelmed by the crushing feeling that had rooted itself into his chest, tightening his rib cage to the point he could barely force oxygen in.

  
His knees are on uncovered concrete, his hands clenched hard enough to cut. The object lies forgotten. Tears run hot down his cheeks, and he knows that there is no controlling himself now, after years of denial. There is another face in front of him, and he finds himself gasping out a name. “Chirrut.”

  
There are hands on his face, and his tears pool at the crook of the thumb. The hands are rough as the tips of the fingers gently brush against his temple. They stop, shaking, as if afraid light touches will crack him beyond repair.

  
“Baze?” The voice wavers, forcing the word out. A question, a fear, a prayer.

  
Baze does not answer through his sobs, but Chirrut’s arms wrap around his back, clutching on as if the man in front of him was a dream that would slip away with the morning light. Tears darkened the fabric of Baze’s shoulder, and he could just make out words muffled by sobs and clothing, repeated like the mantras of their childhood. “My love, my love.”

 

* * *

  
_A final memory, he thinks. The moon shrinks from view, becoming a small sphere in the blackness of the Universe. He is no fool. He knows that on the other side awaits a firing squad or the cold emptiness of space._

  
_A final memory, he had thought, all those years ago. He had boarded the first ship out of Jedha, with nothing to look at besides his blood stained gut spreading color into his robes. The fever was pitching, making him delirious to the point where he could almost see Chirrut in front of him, fretting. A shake of his head, and all that remains is a Stormtrooper. They are taking him to die, that much is certain._

  
_They had killed him then, in spirit if not in body. Now, they set his body loose in a busy marketplace with nothing but a rough shove. The stars are unfamiliar, and he finds no meaning wandering beneath them. The chains may be gone, but he will still die under the Empire._

 

* * *

  
They must have dragged themselves away at some point, as Baze wakes up on a mat to the sound of a ball kicking against the alley. Pale sunlight streams through the window, offering with it the cold Jedhan winds. The quilt is too worn to provide the needed heat, and Chirrut curls into his chest. Cold hands feel strange on his back, and he almost wants to withdraw from the touch.

  
For the first time in eight years, he sees Chirrut’s face properly. Soft lines have appeared on his forehead, but the face that only settled in sleep had hardly changed. If he wished hard enough, it could be temple walls surrounding them, old white sheets below them. The morning bell would be ringing soon enough. Soft moments, stolen from the mouth of busy days.

  
But his hands, the floor, the bite of the wind, they all were too rough for the hazy softness of those days. His hair was ragged, creeping onto his back, and the scars he had now were not from friendly fights and the rush of training matches. The Empire had carved into his body with abandon, and he knew that the pieces would never be whole again. The same jagged flesh runs over Chirrut’s arms, slithering into the lines of his robes. Just as he considers tracing the scars with his fingers - to confirm that they were truly there - Chirrut opens his eyes.

  
Just like in mornings before, he turns to Baze as he wakes up. It feels like he’s moved into an alternate reality, a reality where he’s seen that face every morning for the past ten years. This is merely a facsimile of that reality, Baze realizes as he sees Chirrut’s eyes – fogged over with bright cataracts, bleached to the point where any hint of their old brown was a misremembered dream. His hands, rough against Chirrut’s smooth face, turns the eyes towards him.

  
“You’re blind.” It was a statement that hung in the sharp morning air. Baze had replayed their final day over and over in his head, solidifying details that now ran into the present. Chirrut smiles just as he always did, full of gums and rounded cheeks.

  
“So it seems.”

  
Baze knows how – for how could it be anything but the ones that have taken all the lives in their wake – entire cities and planets, drained until there is nothing left to give. Drained until they die slowly of thirst. Drained like brown leeching out of eyes. An old anger, more familiar – more comforting than any other emotion, settles in the pit of his chest.

  
Chirrut traces the furrows between his brows, the lines and scars on his face that have etched themselves into skin. He understands with his hands, and says:

  
“Anger is a suffocating emotion.”

  
Baze huffs. “You sound like a Jedi.” Except there are none like Jedi in the far and wide reaches of the Empire.

  
“I have never been a Jedi. I am a Guardian.” He wears the robes, he professes the faith.

  
Except there should be no Guardians. And Baze says it so.

  
“There is always something left to guard. The Guardians never guarded the temple, they devoted themselves to the Force, the kyber, the people.”

  
Baze knows this. The mantra was there from when he first set his pen to paper, through the years of love and fools and innocence. He had returned to Jedha with one piece of sure knowledge: that the Force, in whatever form it may take, did not give a shit about the affairs of the Universe which it governed. To devote a lifetime to an insentient object was deranged. Yet Baze could recognize the form of the morning prayer with only the sound of robes moving.

  
“How do you still worship the Force?” There is disbelief. Anger.

  
“Worship is for gods and idols. I am simply attuning my body to the living force that threads the Universe together.” Chirrut does not look at him as he settles his body east. “All as the Force wills it.”

  
That line, once engrained into the impressionable patterns of his young heart, earned a snarl.

  
“The Force willed this?” He wants to say more, explain a decade of loss for them and the galaxy, but words have always failed him. The anger inside threatens to boil over. Years of watching, waiting – all for nothing, because there is nothing inherently good about the galaxy that surrounds him. Chirrut had always been a hopeless dreamer, but even he should have had sense knocked into him by all that had happened.

  
“No one will ever truly understand the ways of the Force.” Chirrut paused and cocked his head, as if listening for something. “Nor should we try to control it. It is always going to be one step ahead, slipping out of our outstretched hands.”

 

* * *

  
_It wasn’t that long ago that they had looked down from their perch in one of the uppermost spires of the Temple, where the burning lights of the city met the line of the dark sky. The easternmost star, one of the brightest in the sky, rested just above the storied top of the old school._

  
_Chirrut, eyes shining and clear, would sit and wait. Baze always dragged himself up the stairs to sit on that stone next to Chirrut and watched his city settle into the night. They sat in silence, and Baze always thought that Chirrut always looked more peaceful here than he ever did in the lulls of meditation._

  
_In the morning, the sun would rise and cast away the shadows of their presence with its burning heat._

* * *

  
“You never had such a strong faith before.” Baze was fumbling, anger and fear combining into a cold sensation in the pit of his stomach.

  
“And you always had such a strong faith before.”

  
It was true. Baze had always felt steady, sure in his teachings. He was always the first to sink into meditation and the last to leave. He had loved his studies the most, favored the mind over the body. Baze had made the choice to walk away from his previous life to walk up the sandstone steps of the Temple.

  
Chirrut had been left on the same steps, a circumstance of life. Although Baze had figured out that Chirrut found his own way of devotion, he had always thought it was bound to Chirrut’s position in the Temple.

  
Yet, here he was, praying in a way he had never in his youth – full of urgency and longing, not restlessness and impatience.

  
At the same time Chirrut must have been truly finding his faith, Baze had shattered something he’d thought unbreakable. It hadn’t been an even exchange - where Chirrut had gained his quiet passion, Baze hadn’t picked up that wild energy. Chirrut had grown, like an old desert tree that stood against the wind and sun. Baze had crumbled into the sand. He had been born with an open and bleeding heart, but a cold heart is what he would die with.

  
Chirrut shifts as he marks the end of his prayers: “May the Force others be with Jedha.”

  
His husband could never stand to let silence settle over a room.

  
“It saddens me that the years have been so harsh.” Chirrut was sitting in front of him, hands on his knees. “We are different people now than when we began, but I will always be bound to you, and I hope that you are to me.”

  
“The promises I’ve made still mean just as much as on the day I said them.” Baze’s place in the galaxy may have shifted, but his devotion had not. It burnt inside him, running hot under his skin.

  
Chirrut had always slipped past any defenses, cutting through vine and thorn to take hold of his most vulnerable self. Sitting here, with his husband in front of him stroking his hand, he felt himself slip into a role he had denied for too long. He drew nearer, hesitantly placing his lips’ on Chirrut. It was both new and old, comforting yet unfamiliar. He breathed, and everything was Chirrut.

  
It was a strange thought.

  
He was home.


End file.
